The Brag About Your Beauties Pageant (And a Giveaway!)

This past summer, I mastered crafty multitasking. After all, what can you do while waiting for your kid at soccer camp? Hand-baste hexagons! What can you do while playing a game of Pokémon? Hand-baste hexagons! What can you do when your children are acting like trolls and school doesn’t start for another two weeks? Lock yourself in your bedroom and hand-baste hexagons!

I should warn you, though: When this trend persists throughout different situations during your summer, you end up with a big backlog of hand-basted hexagons.

My first batch of hexagons resulted in this rainbow-adorned pillow. From the second batch I sewed another pillow, this one in black Essex Linen and Denyse Schmidt’s New Bedford line.

I used mini-charm packs for many of the hexagons I basted this past summer, but for this pillow I opened up a bundle of New Bedford and cut a 2.5-inch square from many of the fat quarters in it. Two of the fat quarters then went into sewing the back. With its French backing and simple knife edges, this pillow was easy-peasy to sew together.

Pageant Details

There are more hexagon finishes to come, but for now, I’d love to know what you’ve finished lately.

That’s my suave segue to the Brag About Your Beauties Pageant, a new linky that will run every Friday except the first Friday of the month.

The pageant rules are simple:

•    Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
•    Point your readers back here with a text link. (Because I haven’t designed a button yet!)
•    Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

A Giveaway

UPDATE: The giveaway is closed. The lucky winner is Alice, aka alidiza!

To celebrate the inception of the Beauties Pageant, Crosscut Sewing Co. has given me an eight-piece fat quarter bundle of Loved to Pieces, by Mathew Boudreaux, to give away. (Crosscut is my local modern quilt shop. The proprietor, Stephanie, has curated a beautiful collection of fabric, including fun novelties, a nice selection from my favorite Moda designers, and plenty of substrates other than quilting cotton. Local friends, Crosscut is in Melrose, Mass, and well worth the drive. Nonlocal friends, check Crosscut out online!)

You have two opportunities to enter to win this fabric bundle: (1) Upload your link to the Beauties Pageant (just one link, please!) and/or (2) leave a comment on this post (just one comment, please!). Also: If you read my posts through Bloglovin’, click through to my original post to comment.

This giveaway is open internationally. Due to the cost of shipping, if you’re an international reader and you win, you will get a US $30 gift certificate to a local-to-you quilt shop instead of the fabric bundle.

This giveaway is open through 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, September 20. The winner will be notified via email, so if you’re a no-reply blogger or comment anonymously, please include your email address in your comment or send it to me at frombolttobeauty (at) gmail (dot) com.